Mega list of our innovation community stakeholders

As I wrote last week, our two most recent ‘What’s next?’ conversations have focused on generating a list of stakeholders. While we commonly think of entrepreneurs themselves, investors, mentors and users as the main players in a startup community, it seems that the list of groups that support entrepreneurs or are influenced by their creations could be much longer.

Startup community conversation on Feb. 11, 2015 at the Iowa Startup Accelerator in Cedar Rapids.

Recently, it feels like there has been more conversation and effort around engaging these different groups. David Tominsky pitched the Iowa Startup Accelerator to the Cedar Rapids Downtown Rotary, which is filled with many existing industry leaders, and has been visiting schools to spread the efforts of CoderDojo. Big companies including TaxACT and Rockwell Collins have backed the upcoming Startup Weekend Cedar Rapids (disclosure: yours truly is an organizer). And as organizers of EntreFEST, Amanda West and Andy Stoll have spent the last three years painting a very inclusive picture, bringing together small business owners, high-tech startup folks, corporate innovators, economic developers and community activists.

I’m reminded of Eric Engelmann‘s words at the Iowa Startup Accelerator launch day: “It’s not just startups over in the corner, it’s everyone getting together to do it.”

Without further ado, here is the list that was generated over the course of two conversations, in no particular order. What ideas does this list inspire? How can we engage more of these groups? Tweet @wecreatehere with ideas.